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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

HUGE news regarding Google and China

Google said it is “reviewing the feasibility of our business operations in China” and may back out of China entirely, as it disclosed it had been hit with major cyberattacks it believes to have originated from the country. The above was posted on the official Google blog by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer:

This entire page is an astounding read. Because of (1) recurring cyber attacks from China, and (2) concurrent attempts from China to hack gmail accounts of people who promote human rights in that country, Google is reviewing its business model in China with an eye to reducing, if not closing, that operation.

Direct from Google: These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

China might do well to do more than just take notice. Google employees several thousand of the world's smartest people, and it pays them to do very smart things. It also has $20 billion (cash) in the bank, which is sufficient to make a lot of things happen.